MtG Legacy Tournament

In my eternal quest to be a bigger geek than anyone would voluntarily announce in public, I'm flirting with the idea of picking up Magic: the Gathering again. For a little bit of background, I used to be quite into this game... I played the Stardard format for a while and as I've kept all my cards, I have a fairly impressive collection of Legacy decks.

This past weekend, I decided to try one of them out in a Legacy tournament... and boy was I in for a wakeup call.

Here's the deck I played:

4x Birds of Paradise
4x Utopia Sprawl
4x Grul Signet
4x Molten Rain
4x Stone Rain
4x Moldavi Acidmoss
4x Argothian Wurm
3x Wildfire
3x Avalanche Riders
4x Harmonise
10x Mountain
10x Forrest
2x Wasteland

It's a fairly simple RG land destruction deck that I put together primarily so that I could play Argotian Wurm, who's picture I really like. Going into the tournament I was pretty confident, I had beaten a Ravager deck 3-0 in practice the week before and didn't think I'd face much that was faster than that.

So how did it turn out? Well....

Round 1: 
I got destroyed 0-2 by a horrible black recursion deck. If you consistently drop a 7/7 turn two.. there's really nothing I can do. I know I should have expected this and had a sideboard with a lot of graveyard hate.. but there aren't really many options in RG and I don't have those cards anyway.

Round 2: 
I got the bye... yay >.<

Round 3:
Went down 1-2 against a Green Black LD deck... first game everything worked fine, second game I drew 3 land for every other card and the third game he managed to kill all my ramp and get ahead of the curve. Not a terrible performance, and with a little more luck I think I could have won this one.

Round 4:
Lost 1-2 against a horrible Dredge combo deck. This thing was crazy... it doesn't actually need any land to function (just to speed it up), so that's just a terrible rock/paper/scissors situation for my LD.

Round 5:
Taken down 1-2 by a very quick and consistent infinite creature combo. Again I had some bad draws, but I probably would have gone down without it as he had many artefacts that made land a pleasant assistant to his deck, rather than the necessity that it usually is.

So... 5 rounds and the only match win I registered was the bye. Ouch >.< I had no idea what the meta-game was going into this tournament, and if I had to do it again I would definitely play something different. Not really sure what, but LD just doesn't seem to work in the format.

I still think I'm going to get back into Magic, but I'll try pick up Standard. It's much easier to prepare properly in a limited format than it is in Legacy, so hopefully next time I do a post like this I will be able report some victories.

-Odd

"You can't blame your opponents for apply a strategy that beats your brains out with regularity" 
-Bill Clinton

Geeks Games and Greatness Podcast: Episode 8 - Tegan Awesome

Episode 8 is here, in which we are joined by our very special guest Tegan Awesome. We talk about the 702 Walk the Talk, Torchwood, webcomics and modelling. We also get a bit meta and Tegan has a surprise geek quiz for the two of us >.<

WARNING: This podcast may contain adult language and massive tangents :WARNING

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Tegan's Links: 

Tegan Thomas: https://www.facebook.com/teganmodel

Tegan Thomas Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrsTeganAwesome

Tegan FHM pages http://fhm.co.za/social/profile/Tegan/

Butcher Bird Clothing https://www.facebook.com/ButcherBirdClothing

Emalyth: https://www.facebook.com/Emalyth.Promotions

Black Apple Productions: https://www.facebook.com/B.Apple.Productions

Twisted: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Twisted/287464744626931

And remember you can find us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GeeksGamesGreatness so go and like us on Facebook and drop us a comment :)

You can also get hold of us on twitter: @OddModlin and @i4n0fd00m or by email: oddcastblog@gmail.com

To the Red Planet

I recently found the coolest thing. The new NASA Mars rover, Curiosity, is tweeting updates to us.

I think this is a super cool use of social technology. You could use your twitter feed to see what the Kardashians are doing (that's still a thing right?) or to stalk Bieber, but I would rather fill it with edifying and interesting phenomena.



The Mars missions are arguably the coolest things happening in science at the moment. They're at very least the most accessibly mind-blowing (the Higgs Boson is cool, but you need to be a physics nerd to really understand it). So you can follow Curiosity on twitter: https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity or get the updates from the NASA Website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html. 


Curiosity is 13 days away from the landing, and I'm really looking forward to getting updates on the fly :) it's going to be awesome.

-Odd
"Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit." -Frank Borman

How to keep IT workers happy. Part 2

Answer your emails. Seriously. We do not send these out for our own edification. We spend our time carefully crafting these missives to give you the impression that it’s not your fault that we don’t have the information/ access/ permission that we need, but that it would be an altruistic act of saint-like proportions if you could help out.

We’re usually lying of course. It’s probably your fault that the project is a month behind schedule. Those 50 emails sitting in your inbox are not invitations to a tea party. They are not friendly ‘how are you’ conversations. I am not sending you my latest 30 page epic about the colour blue in iambic pentameter.

If an IT professional is sending you an email, it is because they need something from you before they can continue with their work. It will take you five minutes to read and reply but if you wait five hours then the poor IT guru has nothing to do but watch stupid cat videos and play games…

…

…

On second thought… maybe hold off on those replies for a little while.

-Odd

“In the time honored tradition of email, just ignore the question.” – John Dobbin

The Geeks, Games and Greatness Podcast: Episode 7

Episode 7! In which we talk about ICON, Necromunda, Magic the Gathering, DS9, Torchwood, the OUYA gaming console, blue ice fridges and fun things to do on the internet.

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Links:
LoadingReadingRun - www.loadingreadyrun.com
Capture the cat - http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html
The Spark quizzes - http://www.sparknotes.com

You can also now find us on our brand new Facebook group! http://www.facebook.com/GeeksGamesGreatness so go and like us on Facebook and drop us a comment :)

You can also get hold of us on twitter: @OddModlin and @i4n0fd00m
or by email: oddcastblog@gmail.com

Necromunda Battle Report – Esher + Van Saar vs Spyer

So this past weekend was ICON, Joburg’s premier gaming/anime/comic convention and it was a blast. As part of this year’s geek-out, a couple of my friends and I decided to play an “exhibition” game of Necromunda.

The Premise:

Nick and I would use our two basic gangs (brand new) and our friend Tim would bring up two Spyers to the same Gang Rating. Nick was playing Van Saar, I was using my Esher and Tim decided on a Jakara and an Orus.

 

The Board:

Tim and I have created quite a lot of Necromunda terrain over the last couple years, a lot of which we carted to ICON.

The Game:

The first couple turns were quick, with Nick and I moving into position and Tim moving up to get into close range.

Then I had the opportunity to jump the Jakara with half my gang (three gangers with two swords and three gangers with a sword and las-pistol). I knew this was probably going to go badly as the Jakara was seriously tooled out, but as I’m playing Esher I didn’t really have much choice.

Needless to say, my six gangers disappeared in a red mist but my gang leader was then able to take down the pesky Spyer with his Plasma Gun.

The Orus was then brought low by the combined fire of three heavy stubbers and the game was ours!

The Conclusion:

Outnumbered 9 to 1, you would think that the large gangs had the obvious advantage, but as the combat with the Jakara showed, you cannot count out a high level Spyer. We were quite lucky with our shooting rolls and Tim was increadibly unluckly with his armor and ward saves. The game would have turned out very differently if his Jakara has been able to bounce the Plasma Gun shot back at my gang leader.

This was great fun to play and we’ve decided to switch up the teams so that all three of us get to play the Spyers in this scenario.

-Odd

“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt” – Commissar  Groden Bevro (Warhammer 40k Compendium)

The number of the Madiba

Six Six Six.
The number of the beast.
Across the road from 667.
A number that conjures thoughts of Satan, Evil and Damnation.
When I first saw the 46664 campaign, I thought, thats a bit, weird.
Madibas prison guards must have had a slew of puns around the middle three digits of his prisoner number. But the campaign worked : that number is now synonymous with hope, charity and freedom.
So how did he do it?
Well to figure out how this new number has eschewed the prejudice of the good 'ol 666, I thought, lets remove the offensive bit....
And the answer was clear as daylight -
46664 less 666 is 4...4....
He used the fource!

-Ian

Geeks, Games and Greatness Podcast - Episode 6: Moar

The 6th episode of the Geeks, Games and Greatness podcast is available here to tickle your eardrums. In this weeks rambeling we talk about more Anime, The Pretender, Star Trek DS9, Settlers of Catan, The Knights of Badassdom, The Higgs Boson, Choose-your-own-adventure books and we argue about pet tigers.

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As always, if you enjoyed the Podcast please leave us a comment, get hold of us on twitter (@OddModlin and@i4n0fd00m) or drop us a mail (oddcastblog@gmail.com)

Geeks, Games and Greatness Podcast: Episode 5 - Anime Part 1

The 5th episode of the Geeks, Games and Greatness Podcast is available for your listening pleasure. We talk about Anime in it's various forms, robots, games and Ian solves Samsung's litigation problems.

WARNING: This Podcast will contain adult language, possible spoilers and massive tangents :WARNING

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Please drop us a comment here on the Blog, on our twitters (@OddModlin and @i4n0fd00m) or email us at oddcastblog@gmail.com

How to keep IT workers happy. Part 1

I've just realised that I am incredibly spoiled. I almost never have to make myself instant coffee any more. Everywhere I go, I am presented with a beautiful little button that will magically produce the espresso based elixir of life that I crave so much.

I must say that my company (Karabina Solutions) definitely know what it is that IT workers need. We need coffee. Well... maybe it's the caffeine: I know some of my friends in the industry swear by their energy drinks.

But for me there will only be one solution. One magic potion that transforms me from a zombie to a semi-functional human-like being.

Thank you, Coffee, without you the civilized world would cease to exist.

-Odd
"Coffee is the best thing to douse the sunrise with." -Terri Guillemets